Thinner Than Thou (Hardcover)

However, the story and its philosophy fall apart in the last third. Coincidences bring together all the main characters -- who had been all over the USA -- at the same time in an underexplained and thus wholly unbelievable manner. The ability of the main characters to go on the offensive in the end is so loose that the reader would have to have a great leap of faith to accept it in any way. The introduction of "Solutions" -- a thinly veiled Final Solution of sorts that appears out of nowhere as if written as an afterthought -- is also so undeveloped and obvious that it is entirely ineffective.

The subject matter also turns away from discussing what is wrong with society in regards to the demands on people to be a certain way and becomes a silly "conspiracy of the thin" that wallows in the idea that demands on the obese not to be gluttonous are nothing more than some kind of power-trip by the thin.

The ending is without a doubt the biggest let-down and worst written endings I have ever read. Like a film with no third act, the book takes an easy way out that gives it the feel of one of those after-school specials on TV designed for teenagers. One can simply understand how badly written it is by reading the last sentence of the novel. Had the book not fallen apart in the end, I would have easily recommended it. But, with its cheap conclusion and the defeatist, conspiratorial mindset it adopts in the end, I find no reason to recommend it to anybody who has more than just a curiousity in the book.

By turns dramatic, hilarious, ghastly and gripping, a kind of suburban magical realism runs through Reed's pages like blood, infusing the story with both the intimate and the fantastic while she slices into our egos like a knife so sharp you don't know you've been cut till you hit the floor.

One of those rare books that will surprise both an author's veteran fans and those just discovering her, Thinner Than Thou is a must-have with an epilogue written on the happy meal boxes and weight-loss pill bottles of an entire nation.

With the evolution of such plastic surgery shows as THE SWAN, surgery and liposuction are being touted as acceptable, if not expected processes in every day life. Weight has been an issue in the media since at least the Sixties and with Hollywood stars now starving themselves to create an even thinner ideal, the idea of a normal body has become skewed to the grotesque.

Thinner Than Thou celebrates those who have been forced into these ideals and the torture required to obtain them and, despite crippling disabilities (anorexia, morbid obesity), these heroes have the strength and the will to fight back. Every aspect of America's obsession with food, from self-starvation to eating contests to the everyday torture of talking ourselves out of that extra cookie is explored and celebrated, for this bleak view of the future is taken with a grain of salt and, more importantly, a fabulous sense of humor.

Ms. Reed has long been a spokeswoman for the American Woman, but she may just have been promoted to being the spokeswoman for the American consciousness. A great book.